Oh, and:

Another thing: if a Parliamentary Private Secretary is the assistant to a Minister...I thought that a Principal Private Secretary (a civil servant) was the assistant to a Minister. So what does the PPS really do, as far as assisting the Minister, then?

And what about a "Junior Minister"? What do they do, run a junior Department?

There's no such position as 'Principal Private Secretary'. The most senior civil servant is the Cabinet Secretary, and then each ministry is headed up by a Permanent Secretary. These are enormous executive positions with responsibility for thousands of staff, although ultimately answerable to the minister. Sir Humphrey is meant to represent a Perm Sec (later promoted to Cabinet Sec when your namesake became PM).

A PPS doesn't really have any kind of executive role per se. The main function is to act as the eyes and ears of a minister in Parliament, helping to pilot bills through the legislature and serving as a link between MPs and ministers. It's an unpaid job that ambitious MPs take on as a first step on the ladder. As for a 'junior minister', they don't ever have control over a department. Each government department is headed by a Secretary of State, who sits in the Cabinet and has overall responsibility for the whole department. Underneath the SoS will usually be 2 or 3 Ministers of State who have specific responsibility for certain portfolios within the department. With some of the larger ministries you also get Parliamentary Under-Secretaries, which are are actual ministerial posts (as opposed to a PPS), but much more junior than the others and responsible for comparatively insignificant portfolios.

JimHackerMP wrote:Another thing: if a Parliamentary Private Secretary is the assistant to a Minister...I thought that a Principal Private Secretary (a civil servant) was the assistant to a Minister. So what does the PPS really do, as far as assisting the Minister, then?

And what about a "Junior Minister"? What do they do, run a junior Department?

We have a heirarchy, and these are all MPs (or members of the Lords):

Cabinet Ministers, or Ministers of State - these run Departments (some are called Secretaries of State, others are Ministers) and along with the Prime Minister sit in Cabinet.

Junior Ministers are subordinate to Cabinet Ministers, and they usually run a part of the overall brief. For example the Defence Secretary has under him three Junior Ministers (one for "Armed Forces" one for "International Security Strategy" and one for "Equipment, Support & Technology"), and also two parliamentary under-secretaries, one who is a Lords Whip and the other looks after Personnel and Veterans Affairs.

Under Ministers there are the PPSs - Parliamentary Private Secretary. These are not Ministers, but assist them. The are not 'in the government' but are whipped as part of the 'payroll vote' (so will be expected to vote with the government on key matters or lose their job as PPS). They are considered bag-carriers, door-keepers to access, and also in many ways potential trainee ministers.

What you are thinking of is the Principal Private Secretary, which is not a political post at all, but Civil Service (and these are directly reporting to the Cabinet Ministers).

Basically, if they are Secretaries of State, Ministers, or "Parliamentary" Under-/Private secretaries then they are MPs (or Lords) in a political role. If they are "Principle" or just plain old Under-/Private Secretaries then they are Civil Servants in a decidedly non-political role (that is the theory).

Next up we have SpAds (Special Advisors). These are not MPs or Lords, and not Civil Servants (at least not in the disinterested/apolitical sense), but political advisors or assistants who work alongside Ministers and Civil Servants. It's a bit of a grey area, and there has been some proliferation of them, as well as some controversy about their actions and roles.

For example one recent SpAd is Andy Coulson, Director of Communications to the PM from 2010-2011 who resigned over his role in newspapers hacking people's phones (and has just been found guilty), even though the events predate his appointment as a SpAd. In other cases they have been accused of having undue influence in government, under this and the previous Labour administration.

Spot-on Ricky: that's what I was getting at pretty much. The federal structure being, in our particular case, a blessing for gay/etc rights. We couldn't win against DOMA (federal), so we collapse a whole crap ton of dominoes at the state level.

Right, I was surprised to see, looking at the CIA World Factbook Chiefs of State & Cabinet Members that most of the high-level ministers are "Secretary of State for [whatever]."

Junior Ministers are subordinate to Cabinet Ministers, and they usually run a part of the overall brief. For example the Defence Secretary has under him three Junior Ministers (one for "Armed Forces" one for "International Security Strategy" and one for "Equipment, Support & Technology"), and also two parliamentary under-secretaries, one who is a Lords Whip and the other looks after Personnel and Veterans Affairs.

Your government sounds [almost] as Byzantine as ours. We used to have a Secretary of War, heading the Department of War, and a Secretary of the Navy, heading the Department of the Navy. The post-war reorganization which created the Defense Department, also created a Department of the Air Force, Department of the Navy and Department of the Army, each with a "Secretary of..." to head them. I have no idea how they relate to the Secretary of Defense, or whether he has power over them or something, but I know all four are presidential appointees (with majority approval of the Senate).

Phun Phact: there is no mention of a Cabinet at all in the United States Constitution. Washington met with them all at once, and it started a tradition, nicknamed the Cabinet because the King of England met with his own cabinet in much the same way. Although, that's not the reason why Washington did it contrary to popular belief (he was simply continuing the same thing he did with his lieutenants as General in Chief of the Continental Army, seeking advice from each one as a group before making decisions). It then became one of those traditions that's not part of America's written constitution. Later presidents, until Lincoln, rarely overruled the advice of their Cabinet.

In the late 20th century they became the line of succession to the presidency, and remained the executive officers in charge of their executive branch departments, but not too much else, not as a group (except the XXV Amendment thing mentioned below) as there are a bizillion executive officers, some of whom are presidential appointees rather than civil servants, that run departments that for some reason are not part of the "official" cabinet. Why would the president want to seek the advice of the Secretary of Agriculture, or Housing and Urban Development, or Education, on a subject like "Iraq has just invaded Kuwait, what do we do guys?"

All the Constitution really says about it is that there will be executive departments of this and that, to be created by Act of Congress, and headed by an executive officer to be appointed by the President (with the Senate's consent). This is all it says:

...he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, ...

and in the same section:

...shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

However, there is ONE time they have any kind of collective authority whatsoever, and it still makes no mention of a "cabinet": in Amendment XXV, like they did on The West Wing when Zoe Bartlet was kidnapped:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, ...

The president usually meets with them as a publicity sort of thing, probably with lots of photographs, to make the government look less....just him. (A necessary thing to do, especially with the current occupant of the Oval Office.) In the past, presidents did actually seek their advice, and, before Lincoln, more or less their actual consent for certain matters. But since our executive was not designed to be plural, the authors of the Constitution figured he would go to the senators if he needed actual "advice". I think Washington did in fact try this, but got pissed off and stormed out of the chamber when they all started to talk at once and he couldn't get a word in edgewise.


OK, so if some MPs are the cabinet, including the Prime Minister, and some are "junior ministers" and some are "PPSs", how many are the "none of the above" MPs who don't do anything? They're called "backbenchers" or something right? And is the system the same or similar in Canada?

Off the top of my head, I believe the total number of MPs who form part of the 'payroll vote' (ie, government ministers and members of the whips office etc) comes to about 100 or so. I may be wrong about this, it's a long time since this information was of any use to me, but I'm pretty sure it's more or less accurate. This is out of 650 MPs in total, although it wouldn't be accurate to describe the rest of them as backbenchers because the opposition also have a 'front bench' contingent which includes the leadership and their various departmental shadow ministers.

Right, the shadow ministers, I know about these. There is an entire Shadow Cabinet, of which the Opposition Leader is the leader, that sit on the front bench to the Speaker's left, I am told. I imagine that the Shadow Home Secretary (just throwing that name out there) would square off with the actual Home Secretary, right across from him/her, during Minister's Questions or something (I assume that's part of their function, but I did know of their existence).

To me, either system offers advantages and disadvantages, when it comes time to forming a new government, who gets to be in it. Once someone has become prime minister (I understand the Queen invites him/her over to kiss her hand for her "permission" to form a government on her behalf...and have tea...) and it's therefore official, the new government literally comes out of the woodwork that day, or the next day. In the United States it takes weeks of hearings in the Senate. The advantage to the presidential system is that (in my opinion at any rate, I ask no one to agree with me) even though you do not get a new government in place very quickly, there has to be some compromise between a new President (in his capacity as head of government) and the senators--who the president wants in his government, versus who the senators will actually accept--rather than the personal fiat of the head of government [prime minister/chancellor/whatever].

Also, if there's not the same sort of freedom among MPs to vote however the hell they want, and not just however the government via the whips want them to vote, how can individual MP's fight back against something being forced on them by the government?

It is not your fault, Jim. Many Americans have the same difficulty with British politics. Even a Secretary of State!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2679308/Forgiving-Bill-adultery-absolutely-right-choice-OBL-raid-stressful-30-minutes-life.html

I was thinking that some of the American tourists abroad were stupid or inane. It extends to the cabinet? Wow...

Off the top of my head, I believe the total number of MPs who form part of the 'payroll vote' (ie, government ministers and members of the whips office etc) comes to about 100 or so. I may be wrong about this, it's a long time since this information was of any use to me, but I'm pretty sure it's more or less accurate. This is out of 650 MPs in total, although it wouldn't be accurate to describe the rest of them as backbenchers because the opposition also have a 'front bench' contingent which includes the leadership and their various departmental shadow ministers.

so I am guessing (I may have missed it if someone already said it) how is a bill "initiated" in the House of Commons? And who gets to do it? a Minister? Can a non-government (not a Sos, PPS or Jr Minister/minister of state) MP initiate a bill or some sort of legislation?

Most bills are initiated by the government. There is also a provision for private members bills but these are limited in number and most stand almost no chance of ever becoming law. The way it works is that they have a randomly drawn ballot of all MPs and the winners get the right to introduce their bill during the Parliamentary session. However, government bills take priority. Private members bills have to be fit into the session as and when they can. In effect what happens to most of them is that they don't manage to make it all the way through to their third reading before the session runs out. Our system doesn't allow for old bills to carry over from one session to the next, so any bills that haven't been completed by the close of the session are abandoned. MPs know this of course, most private members bills are just an excuse for showboating or a chance to draw attention to a favoured hobby horse issue. Very occasionally they make it into law, but only when they get picked up by the major parties and given active assistance to pass through the committee stages quickly.

Wow; that sux...

Allow me to elaborate on the "sux" comment.

It seems that after any general election, Parliament promptly hands over power over the country to the Cabinet, and, in a lieu of any real ability to hold the government to accountability by the upper house, the House of Commons becomes a rubber stamp for the government.

I have to admit that anti-democratic features are necessary in democracies to keep popular power from getting out of control. Yes, even popular power can get out of control. Just because it came from the People, does not mean it's more benevolent.

Question is, how big is the UK's "nominal selectorate", it's "real selectorate" and the cabinet's/prime minister's "winning coalition"? I'd be willing to explain, it's more neat stuff from the Bueno de Mesquita/Smith book I'm reading. Though I have to admit the going is slow...but I've picked up some interesting tidbits of how to look at politics in ways I hadn't thought of before.

It seems that after any general election, Parliament promptly hands over power over the country to the Cabinet, and, in a lieu of any real ability to hold the government to accountability by the upper house, the House of Commons becomes a rubber stamp for the government.

That's not really true. MPs do rebel against the party line quite regularly. They tend not to do it over anything that was a manifesto commitment (for obvious reasons, since they stood for election promising to do those things even if they personally may not always agree with them), and neither do they do it for confidence motions or budgets (which are treated as a de facto confidence motion), but on all kinds of other issues you get MPs who vote against their own leadership if they disagree strongly with the proposed legislation. Oftentimes the mere threat of doing so is enough to force a climbdown from the government, because losing a vote in the Commons is seen as a big deal to be avoided. The best illustration of this was Parliament's refusal to vote for war in Syria, which not only had a profound impact on British foreign policy in direct contravention of the government's wishes, but also had the added effect of ultimately inspiring the US Congress to follow suit. Parliament was hardly a rubber stamp on that occasion.

There are other ways that Parliament can hold the government to account as well. Ministers are required to take questions on the floor of the House in an adversarial setting every few weeks (or every week in the case of the PM). Senior members of the administration in the States don't have to face anything like that level of everyday scrutiny outside of their confirmation hearings. Then there are the select committees. These tend to be staffed by backbench MPs with no real leadership ambitions but a lot of experience, and they do excellent work in scrutinising the actions of government on a much deeper level than simply looking at current legislation.

hacker

I have to admit that anti-democratic features are necessary in democracies to keep popular power from getting out of control.

The nations are representative democracies.
The question is, if a majority of the electorate has expressed a desire, through the election, that a party be elected to govern - shouldn't they be able to govern without a minority stopping governance?
In the UK and Canada, generally a party with majority seats can govern.,
If by "get out of control" you mean do things that aren't popularly supported ... I'd ask how you came to the conclusion that something wasn't popularly supported. And whterh or not, when elected, representatives have been given the authority to make their own mind up as to whats right. That essentially why we have representative governemnt, so that full time legislators become expert at their duties, including understanding the issues...
If you mean, do things that the constitution doesn't alllow ...that doesn't happen. recently then PM of Canada had his choice for Supreme Court turned down because it didn't meet the terms requird by the Constituion. PM in Uk is similarly bound by the Constitution and by precedence.

But in the American system thats not true. Power is checked and balanced by constitutional structure. Because of this, partites have power, even if they are a minority to stop legislation. And governance.
Moreover, although the House is generally representative democracy because most congressmen are elected from reasonably similar sized districts, and usually are elected with a majority or at least a plurailty of votes thats not the case for the Presdient or Senators.
Starting with the president it isn't unusual for a Presidnt to be elected without a majority of the votes cast. Sometimes even with fewer votes than his main opponent. The natrue of the Electoral college creates this problem. Its not every vote is equal, which would seem to me to be less than true representative democracy.
And the Senate is in no way an instituion of representative democracy. when Wyoming gets two votes and California gets two votes that means the citizens of wyoming have greatly outsized power. Senators from only 38% of the population of the US could pass a majority vote in the Senate.

Now, that can happen in parliamentary systems like Canada and the UK where mulitiple parties split the vote and create a situation where candidates get elected with plurailities and where majorities can form where nationally the vote for a party might be anywhere from 39% to 44% and yet a party has a majority.
That speaks to the need for proportional representation or maybe a first choice second choice ballot. But studies have shown that only occassionally hass a party been elected that probably wouldn't have been elected because of second choice votes ...

Senior members of the administration in the States don't have to face anything like that level of everyday scrutiny outside of their confirmation hearings.

Not true. They get subpoenaed all the time to appear before this or that Congressional committee. You should have seen the grilling they gave the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs before he threw in the towel and resigned. Both parties' senators were disemboweling the **** out of him. That's actually pretty typical, not just when something goes wrong. If subpoenaed, they must appear or else they are in "contempt of Congress", a felony, a term which never fails to make me giggle (is there a prison big enough fit everyone who's got contempt for Congress?) While every member of the administration--whether "cabinet level" or no--may not be summoned to appear before Congress all the time necessarily, they probably encounter far worse grilling than what I have seen in Minister's or Prime Minister's Questions (which I kid you not they show on C-SPAN). No matter what party they're from, or the majority of the committee is from, they still get the crap grilled out of them by at least somebody. I've seen it done and there is no way out, lol.

Honestly I didn't realize MPs had much independence. Someone (maybe it was Danivon, maybe someone else) a long time ago on this website was saying that the advntage of the U.S. system is that our members of Congress--as I said previously--have a freedom to vote the way they actually want to, more than most other legislatures around the world. OK...so I could be wrong about that (my assumption MP's independence, etc.) Well, what happens when we ass-u-me, right?

Starting with the president it isn't unusual for a Presidnt to be elected without a majority of the votes cast. Sometimes even with fewer votes than his main opponent. The natrue of the Electoral college creates this problem. Its not every vote is equal, which would seem to me to be less than true representative democracy.

Actually, the situation wherein a candidate wins the presidency (because he has a "majority of the whole number of electors appointed") but lost the popular vote, has only happened twice. Count em, twice. And that is out of 57 presidential elections between 1789 and 2012. Or, if you prefer to use the date by which only one state was holding out on the popular vote (South Carolina), 1836, that's 45 presidential elections (SC's population was and is probably not enough to "throw off" the result too far, statistically speaking). two out of 45, if you do not count 1876, which was a particular kind of electoral balls-up which did not directly involve the electoral college--a special "electoral commission" is responsible for the "victory" of Rutherford B. Hayes.

Namely, 1888 (incumbent Grover Cleveland v. Benjamin Harrison) and 2000 (George W. Bush v. Al Gore). The other 42 times it went just fine. Now, in all those elections, the popular vote %age may not have perfectly squared with the electoral vote %age, but the winner of each (EC and popular vote) was the same, the person who won the most votes. There have been I think 14 (not 100% sure on that number) elections since the Civil War in which the winner of the popular (and electoral) vote won with a plurality of popular votes (42% and 49% for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, respectively). 42% is pretty low, though I think Abraham Lincoln in 1860 with just under 40% of the popular vote--still the winner by plurality, but that's the lowest it's ever gone as far as non-majority presidents are concerned.

The electoral college does have a rather important benefit: since the popular vote number is not the legal mechanism which declares who is the actual winner, there is no need to have a runoff popular election, as is done in France, Brazil, etc., in their presidential elections. Someone mentioned the low turnout in primaries. Well think about that. What would the turnout be like if we had to vote twice in the same month? a general election followed by a runoff election a few weeks later? I shudder to think how few would bother. So it makes a "minority" (more accurately, a plurality) presidency legally possible, without having to go any further.

Unless the electoral college deadlocks. If that happens in my lifetime, I will eat my hat. But in that case, the House elects the President, so voter turnout is only a big deal for the 435 congressmen that have to deal with it.

But that is getting off topic. Think of a "plurality" president like Clinton (both times), Wilson (both times) and a few others I cannot remember off the top of my head as no different than a minority government in Canada. When a U.S. president does not usually win a very impressive result, like a plurality, however large, he usually ends up having to make up for it by extending his hand across the aisle. Usually.

One of my professors put it this way: America's founders were not concerned with majority rule: it was individual liberty (well, THEIRS mostly but even so...) Even today, too many people forget the "tyranny of the majority", the built-in caveat to any democratic constitution. Even popular power must be checked by something, even in a democracy. So if there are "undemocratic" parts of the constitution, don't be surprised that some other democracies around the world have imitated these "undemocratic" things in their own constitutions.

The Commonwealth of Australia for example. But I'm running late and will finish this point later.

hacker

When a U.S. president does not usually win a very impressive result, like a plurality, however large, he usually ends up having to make up for it by extending his hand across the aisle

How's that working out right now? When incredibly popular legislation can't get passed ...because on insitutionalized gridlock .... your system is dysfunctional.

For all its international power, the United States government seems increasingly powerless to make laws for the benefit of its own people. The recent failure to implement popular gun control measures in the wake of the Newtown massacre is a poignant example. 91% of Americans support President Obama’s proposal that criminal background checks should be required for all sales of guns.
Last Thursday, this measure failed to pass the United States Senate, despite having the support of a majority of Senators. How can a minority of legislators in one house of one branch of the government defeat popular legislation on behalf of an even tinier minority of Americans who are convinced that the government wants to round up gun owners and put them in camps?

worth a short read
http://theconversation.com/dysfunction- ... lock-13603

Because of the number of veto players in the American system, legislation is nearly impossible without cooperation from members of both parties. This is a uniquely uncooperative time in American politics. Parties in Congress are increasingly disciplined, behaving more like parties in a Westminster system. This is fine for a Westminster system where a majority simply rules, but in the American system it means gridlock.
This is not an accident. Polarisation in Congress is largely a result of Republicans moving to the right. Pleas for “cooperation” mean “capitulation” for many Congressional conservatives, whose main audience is their party’s activist base. For them, the question “why can’t you come together?” means “why don’t you give up?” They are not giving up any time soon, and they will continue to use rules that protect minorities to wreak havoc on Obama’s agenda in Congres

s.